When the Future Arrives. A Letter to My Nieces and Nephews For 2022
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You are living in a different world than the one I grew up in. I feel like living in a transitional world.
Being part of generation X, I know a world without internet, smartphones or social media platforms and a world where we played with friends outside, rain or shine, returning home at dawn, hungry and dirty from playing.
Then I find myself writing my thesis on a thing called computer. Meanwhile, your generation and the previous generations are holding a tiny hyper fast computer in our hands with a high-end camera and calling via face-time friends in Australia at no cost. For you this is normality.
What a transition.
And you wonder, what will stay the same and what will be different?
I suspect, eventually, the issues you come up against will not be that dissimilar.
What are the questions you are facing in the future, starting with 2022 right in front of you?
How will you cope with change in a world where uncertainty is the norm and information overflow is twisting our brain? What goals should you set yourself and how can you find purpose and fulfillment in your life?
I believe that there are some fundamental concepts and values that are as important and helpful in the future as they were in the past when it comes to navigating your daily life.
See the bigger picture
In our fast-rolling, constant on-demand, and the overwhelmingly stuffed world we get lost in detail and lose sight of the big picture.
We can look into every corner of the world, can get information about everything, are constantly tinkering with our networks, and yet we seem to lose sight of the big picture, that everything is somehow connected.
Despite the intensity of your daily lives and surroundings, the world is not all about you, me, or us. There is a bigger picture out there which we are able to grasp if we are just curious and open enough and consciously turn our attention outward.
As Marcus Aurelius describes: “Everything is intertwined as if by a sacred bond. Almost nothing is foreign to itself. All that is created is…
